SGAN. Take this; and tell your master not to presume so far as to write
letters again, and send them in gold boxes; say also that Isabella is
mightily offended at it. See, it has not even been opened. He will
perceive what regard she has for his passion, and what success he can
expect in it.




SCENE VIII.--VALÈRE, ERGASTE.


VAL. What has that surly brute just given you?

ERG. This letter, sir, as well as this box, which he pretends that
Isabella has received from you, and about which, he says, she is in a
great rage. She returns it to you unopened. Read it quickly, and let us
see if I am mistaken.

VAL. (_Reads_). "_This letter will no doubt surprise you; both
the resolution to write to you and the means of conveying it to your
hands may be thought very bold in me; but I am in such a condition, that
I can no longer restrain myself. Well-founded repugnance to a marriage
with which I am threatened in six days, makes me risk everything; and in
the determination to free myself from it by whatever means, I thought I
had rather choose you than despair. Yet do not think that you owe all to
my evil fate; it is not the constraint in which I find myself that has
given rise to the sentiments I entertain for you; but it hastens the
avowal of them, and makes me transgress the decorum which the
proprieties of my sex require. It depends on you alone to make me